Review: WWE ‘12

Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 (reviewed), Wii.

Every year for as long as I can remember, there has been a new WWE videogame. Sometimes two in the same year. And every single time a new one comes out, we’ve been told this is something new. This is a huge improvement over last year’s build. THIS IS THE WRESTLING GAME THAT WILL CHANGE ALL WRESTLING GAMES. And every year we get a marginal, but enjoyable, improvement.

2011 is a year like any other.

Let’s be honest with ourselves, though. This IS one of the more radical improvements over recent iterations of THQ’s annual wrestling game. For starters, it is now called WWE ’12, as opposed to WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2012. Less of a mouthful, but no matter what, saying WWE still doesn’t roll off the tongue nearly a decade after the legendary wrestling promotion changed its name. But beyond that, the engine has received a significant and practically noticeable revamp with its all-new Predator Technology. Wrestlers look sharper, moves can be interrupted at (almost) any time, and matches just flow a lot better. On the gameplay front, THQ definitely did some work.

Ever since, say, SmackDown vs Raw 2009, the series has been on a steady incline as far as playability. Every year we get a smoother, tighter experience with matches that get closer and closer to what we see every Monday and Friday on television. This year, THQ has refined the gameplay even more, making a wrestling experience that flows almost as well as – dare I say it – the untouchable WWF No Mercy for the Nintendo 64.

First and foremost, grappling is back to being button-based. While I thoroughly enjoyed using the right analog stick to control light and heavy grapples in years past, buttons have always felt the most responsive. Grappling works the same as it always has, with light grapples and heavy grapples allowing quicker and weaker or slower and more powerful moves, respectively. New to the grappling, though, is the ability to individually target parts of the body to weaken your opponent. Say you’re playing as Alberto del Rio, a man whose finishing manoeuvre is a submission arm bar. Instead of trying to remember which moves do damage to the arms or awkwardly positioning your stomps to the arms when your opponent is on the ground, you can now hold R1/RB and use the face buttons to attack the head, arms, or legs. Unfortunately, there’s only a single move for each part of the body, but it’s a great start and is incredibly helpful when going for a finishing submission.

Refined controls aside, everything just feels more pleasant. The physics system introduced in last year’s game has seen some minor improvements, most notably in the ability to interrupt moves at any time. The awkwardness of failed blows while someone sets up a 20-second animation is mostly gone. You’ll still have your moments here or there where you just can’t stop a move, but at least there’s a punching sound for your failed efforts instead of absolutely nothing at all. They’ve managed to find a good balance between interrupting things where it makes sense and preventing matches with more than two players from becoming impossible to enjoy.

Finishing off your opponent is the best it’s been in years. The ability to perform a finisher is still triggered after pulling off a signature move once your momentum bar fills, but we’ve now got finisher taunts! Once your opponent is down and out from a signature move, merely taunt and your player will prepare themselves for their finishing blow as your opponent groggily steps right into position. Of course, this can still be reversed and finishers are easier to predict than ever, but players no longer have to worry about getting their opponent in the perfect position. And if you just can’t nail that single-button reversal system? Worry not. Downed players can activate a comeback after being beaten brutally enough, setting up a quick-time event spot that lets you get your momentum back and gives you a chance to turn the tables and seal the deal. It does wonders in adding excitement to matches, and greatly heightens the presentation.

And speaking of presentation, that is where WWE ’12 truly shines . On the surface, it’s naturally a visual improvement from years past. Some wrestlers may look a tad off (CM Punk is far more handsome than the game leads you to believe), but the muscle tone, sweat shine, and all the other gross details look spectacular. But more importantly, the developers have studied footage of WWE matches long and hard, figuring out camera placement and timing to match what is seen on television every week. What we get are shots identical to those taken by WWE’s cameramen, showcasing the action exactly as it’s seen by millions at home. Moves have multiple angles, the camera shakes and zooms appropriately, and even taunts have individual shots! The WWE feel is stronger than ever from a visual standpoint, and it looks great.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound nearly as great. Sound design has never been exceptional in WWE games, and with the visuals given such a boost, it’s a shame that the audio had to stay where it was. First of all, entrance themes have some weird distortion to them, like they’re being played in an arena with horrendous acoustics. Yet if you watch any WWE production, the theme songs suffer no drawbacks in quality when blared over the speakers. The crowds sound weird, always sounding significantly less full than a WWE show, and they pick and choose who they cheer for, turning on wrestlers mid-match if they choose to. The sound effects work well, sure, but aren’t mixed in particularly well.

Nothing in the sound department sounds especially together – it all seems very separate and as a result, audio immersion is pretty hard to achieve. That rings even more true for voice acting. The audio clips of wrestlers on the mic during the Road to WresteMania mode just don’t sound right. It sounds far too separate from the already poorly established atmosphere. And it doesn’t help that the voice acting is atrocious. Some guys, like Sheamus and William Regal, pull it off with class, but guys who are typically stellar on the stick like Triple H and John Cena fall uncomfortably flat. And believe me, you will cringe when you hear Ricardo Rodriguez phoning it in during Alberto del Rio’s entrance

"Something something something FELLA something something"

Luckily, Road to WrestleMania mode isn’t dragged down too much by the performances. The story mode is back and is more linear than ever before. While that may elicit groans from the old-schoolers, this is very much a good thing. Career modes in wrestling games have become progressively more linear as the years pass. No Mercy had a massive, branching story mode that could be replayed dozens of times with different outcomes every time. Here Comes the Pain gave you many choices as well, but had a lot more structure to it. The SmackDown vs Raw series started offering multiple storylines with one clear-cut path for each. And now, in WWE ’12, we get one single storyline, but one that encompasses well over a year in the WWE. Starting as Sheamus, moving onto Triple H, and finishing as a create-a-wrestler, this year’s Road to WrestleMania is excellent. The writing is on par with, if not better than, much of the current WWE programming, and the week-to-week flow of the story is paced incredibly well. Plus it’s nice to see William Regal getting a storyline, even if it is only in a game.

Road to WrestleMania plays as you would expect, with many difficult challenges being thrown your way in the form of handicap or gimmick matches. The difficulty spikes early on and rarely lets up, but it only helps you become a better player. In addition to traditional matches, you get to interact in backstage segments as well as post-promo brawls that only end once you’ve sufficiently beaten your opponent. What’s both fun and frustrating is that a lot of these segments and matches end with a tap of the triangle/Y button, giving you a cutscene to move along to the next bit.

They’re fun because they present you with well-directed cutscenes, but frustrating because you realise that the game is honestly just not good enough to let you do these things within the actual game. For example, a TLC match between John Cena and Sheamus, played by you, goes until the ending is triggered. From there, you see a cutscene of Sheamus turning his back to Cena as Cena climbs the ladder, grabbing him for his High Cross powerbomb and tossing him outside the ring. A cool ending, but why doesn’t the game let me do that myself? Even a quick-time event would be better than sitting there wondering why a wrestling game in 2011 is still this incompetent.

These minor gripes aside, it’s a full-length campaign mode, clocking in at around eight or so hours. The writing is good, there’s great variety in what you do, and a whole lot of challenge. Your skills will be put to the test, and you will certainly be tempted to snap your controller in half at numerous points, but it’ll all be worth it as the skills prepare you to go online.

Wade Barrett just about to hit Randy Orton with the Wasteland

I am thrilled to say that WWE ’12’s online component is a vast improvement on recent years. I don’t know if it was good luck in my time with the game, or bad luck in my time with previous versions, but the painful and unplayable lag of past years is practically gone. No more do you have to wait two seconds for a move to register – it happens almost instantaneously! Matches are actually playable online! Unfortunately, you’ll still be forced to go up against people who practically live online, and you’re bound to get beaten down many times, but from a technical standpoint it plays quite well.

Matchmaking is still a slow process, and there are some odd menu decisions, but the most important part – playability – is finally a reality in a WWE game’s online mode. Pretty nice. And like last year, just about every mode is available for play, including the Royal Rumble, which is always a treat online. The only real, true negative about the online mode is having to see the offensively dumb create-a-wrestlers of many players online. You know the type – every single attire slot used, jackets over shirts over singlets, dark colors and crazy tribal designs, insane movesets featuring all high-flying show-off moves, and names like “Dark DeathRyder.” It’s unfortunate, but it makes it feel so much better when you win.

While on the subject of the create-a-wrestler mode, well, it is pretty much the same as it’s always been. A few new items may have been added here or there, but it’s largely unchanged, and that’s not really a bad thing. How much more do you really need in a create-a-wrestler mode? Same goes for all the other create modes. You can still make custom logos, moves, stories, entrances, TitanTron videos, and highlight reel videos, all of which are uploadable in the thankfully easy to navigate community creations menu. And if you own the PS3 version, you can upload your video creations (sans music) to YouTube! Check out my video I made simulating the day I eventually meet CM Punk:

One new addition to the create modes, though, is create-an-arena, something fans have been clamouring for as long as I can remember. And it’s pretty nice! You can do whatever you please to the aprons, turnbuckles, ring posts, ring mat, even the commentator’s table and electric banners are customisable! You can really make an arena your own here, and it’s a lot of fun to slap together something to call your own. Unfortunately, the stage is a huge part of the arena that can’t be touched, but this year laid a nice foundation for what we can hope are fully customisable arenas in the future.

Last but not least is the returning WWE Universe mode, the eternal story mode. Last year, I saw Universe mode as something simple to be expanded upon later on. This year, unfortunately, I feel the same way. There have been changes, sure, like the addition of the draft and a handful of new generic cutscenes, but it still basically serves as a watered down GM mode. It goes through the cards of Raw, Superstars and SmackDown every week of a calendar year, plus pay-per-views, and keeps track of feuds and alliances, naturally developing over the months. It’s basically endless, inserting minor, base story points here and there to keep things moving. It’s not the most mind-blowing thing in the world, but it will always give you something to do whenever you turn on the game. The busywork nature of it is surprisingly a lot of fun. The most convenient improvement of Universe mode over last year’s version is that there’s a more defined, fully separate exhibition mode, preventing Universe from being the obtrusive pain it was last year.

Yeah, there’s a lot going on this year, and thankfully all of it is good. While there are still many things that need tweaking in future years, these are things that have been a problem since wrestling games began in the 80s. Commentary will never be good, no game will ever be up to date (Madden-like updates for WWE games aren’t as simple as you’d think), and we’ll probably never see wrestlers sell a move for the PERFECT amount of time. But what we have here is a game with TV-quality presentation, matches that play and flow just right, a roster of the best wrestlers in the world, a wealth of unlockables, and more features and customisation than you’ll ever need. I think that’s a very fair trade-off.

Is this the best wrestling game ever? No it is not. But it is still an improvement over recent years and is very much worth the time of wrestling fans past and present. Whether you pick up a new WWE game every year or have been waiting on the next one worth your time, this is a wrestling game that will not disappoint.